Keith visits!

My son, Keith, escaped the polar vortex and flew out from Madison, WI, where it was in the minus 20s, for a wonderful visit over the weekend!

Even though it rained on Friday, it was a relatively balmy 40-something so we walked a good hour on the Cushman Trail in Gig Harbor. It was peaceful and quiet, with a steady but light rainfall and only a few others on the trail. We geared up for rain, so we stayed comfortable.

On the Cushman Trail with Keith.

Saturday it was still raining but colder, so we headed over to the Museum of Glass in Tacoma, where it's always cozy and colorful.

To get to the museum we walked through the outdoor Bridge of Glass, whose walls and ceiling are filled with glass artist and Tacoma native Dale Chihuly's wildly colorful pieces.

Inside, we sat for an hour in the Hot Shop. Here, the glass artists were making a version of the big piece in the foreground of this photo. A commentator explained the process and answered questions, while the action was also shown on a big screen.

Then we spent a long time in a moody exhibit by Preston Singletary called "Raven and the Box of Daylight." Before Raven released the Daylight, the world was dark and rainy (like winters here in the Northwest). The exhibit was filled with sounds of rain and ravens, and visitors cast eerie shadows.

We had fun with our shadows: 

With Keith at a Preston Singletary exhibit, Museum of Glass.

Afterward, we tried to catch the sunset at the Fox Island Bridge, but discovered that in the winter the sun sets behind trees instead of over the water. All I got were the soft reflected colors of these clouds in the east.

I guess a lot of families would go to the movies on a rainy winter evening, but we're nature lovers so we went down to the harbor for Pier Into the Night. This event is sponsored by Harbor WildWatch and has divers taking videos underwater and showing their discoveries in real time on a big screen up on the pier. Mostly they find crabs and cell phones.

We capped the night off with an excellent nature film called "Mountain" on Netflix.

Before he took off this morning, we did the obligatory pose in front of my favorite quilt. It was a great weekend!

Have a colorful day